History by month
December
31 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
December 1
1955 Rosa Parks refuses to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery,
December 2
1942 Enrico Fermi's team ignites Chicago Pile-1, triggering the world's first self-su
December 3
1967 Christiaan Barnard injected potassium into Denise Darvall's heart to declare her
December 4
1945 The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 7 to join the newly formed United Nations, instantly
December 5
1933 The ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933, officially r
December 6
1992 Extremist Hindu activists demolished the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid in Ayodh
December 7
1941 Thirty-five3 Japanese aircraft launched a devastating two-wave strike that sank
December 8
1980 Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon dead at the Dakota entrance just as he retur
December 9
1968 Douglas Engelbart unveiled the computer mouse, hypertext, and a bit-mapped graph
December 10
1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Ri
December 11
1941 Germany and Italy formally declare war on the United States just days after Amer
December 12
1901 Guglielmo Marconi catches a faint "S" in Morse code at Signal Hill, proving wire
December 13
1636 Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia regiments to defend against the
December 14
1911 Roald Amundsen's team reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, beating Rober
December 15
1939 Victor Fleming's epic sweeps audiences into a sweeping romance that redefined Ho
December 16
1773 Sons of Liberty disguised as American Indians boarded ships and dumped East Indi
December 17
1903 Wilbur's sharp pull during their first powered attempt stalled the Flyer in thre
December 18
1620 The Mayflower's crew and passengers signed the Mayflower Compact to establish a
December 19
1998 The House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton on charges of perj
December 20
1803 The United States seized 828,000 square miles from France for roughly four cents
December 21
1968 Apollo 8's crew executed the first manned trans-lunar injection, breaking free f
December 22
1894 A flawed court-martial falsely convicts French officer Alfred Dreyfus of treason
December 23
1948 Seven Japanese leaders hang at Sugamo Prison after the International Military Tr
December 24
1906 Reginald Fessenden shattered the silence of the airwaves on this day by transmit
December 25
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev steps down as president, triggering the immediate dissolution
December 26
2004 The Indian Plate subducted beneath the Burma Plate, unleashing tsunamis that dro
December 27
1831 Charles Darwin steps onto the HMS Beagle in 1831, launching a five-year voyage t
December 28
1895 The Lumiere brothers held the first public screening of projected motion picture
December 29
1890 U.S. cavalrymen opened indiscriminate fire on an unarmed Lakota encampment, slau
December 30
1981 Wayne Gretzky dropped five goals into the net during his team's thirty-ninth gam
December 31
1907 New Yorkers gathered in Longacre Square for the inaugural midnight ball drop, re